1. Field of the Invention
The invention lies in the field of conveying and further processing flexible, two-dimensional objects, in particular printed products. It relates to a device and to a method for taking over such objects, in particular printed products such as e.g. newspapers, magazines, brochures, catalogues, part-products of such printed products, or supplements, advertising material, cards, goods samples, CDs.
2. Description of Related Art
The further processing of printed products is carried out at ever increasing speeds. Moreover, more and more complex products are put together of several part-products and processed. Both of these, the high speeds and the complexity of the products, require a very accurate control of the product position at each point in time of the processing.
A process which occurs very often is the so-called insertion: one or more part-products (also called pre-products) are inserted into a folded or glued outer product (also called main product). The part-products to be inserted may be printed products or also other objects, e.g. supplements, advertising material, cards, goods samples, CDs.
The main product, for example, is transferred by a gripper conveyor to an insertion system, e.g. an insertion drum or a revolving system, before the insertion procedure. The insertion system has several receiver units in the form of pockets. The main products with the back, e.g. the fold edge or glued connection in front, are inserted into these and are braked at the pocket base acting as an abutment. The main product is subsequently opened and the further objects are inserted into the opened main product.
Moreover, from the CH application No. 00788/08 which has no prior publication, it is known to leave the folded main product in the gripper and to support it by way of a receiver unit during the insertion procedure, i.e. for as long as the gripper needs to be opened for the purpose or receiving the further product, wherein the receiver unit is formed by way of several co-moved support elements cooperating with one another, and is subsequently removed again.
With the known devices, the feed direction normally runs in a different direction than the further conveying by the receiver units. For the transfer, the singularised objects must be transferred into the moved receiver units within a very short time. For this reason, little space and time is available for the actual transfer. The objects are led with one edge in front, through an entry opening of the receiver unit, into this. Thereby, the objects are often subjected to very large (negative) accelerations and are stopped by an abutment of a receiver unit and aligned thereon. The sudden braking at the abutment may lead to the newly fed object, which has a certain intrinsic elasticity, being squashed at the abutment, deforming and rebounding opposite to the feed direction when relaxed. Thereby, it may be laterally dislocated. If it consists of several part-objects, these may also mutually dislocate and/or rotate on relaxing. This effect occurs above all with thin objects. The inaccuracies in the position of the object may lead to errors in the further processing chain and should therefore be avoided.